As she listened to them, she thought "that sounds like me." Then she happened to look at the sky.

"I saw two beautiful, white cumulus clouds. I said to myself `That's it!"

Ever since she was a teen-ager, Bradby had wanted to be a meteorologist. Seeing those clouds at that time made her decide to do something about it. She went home, she called Joe Foulkes, the bass-voiced meteoroligist on Channel 13, and asked what she should do.

"Joe Foulkes was always my idol," Bradby says. "He invited me to come down to the station and talk about it."

During the talk, Foulkes suggested she contact Terry Ritter, now chief meteorologist of the National Weather Service in Norfolk. They told her about the requirements for the job and the courses available for it.

Today she has completed eight years of study, and plans to continue, Bradby says.

She made her first weather forecast in 1978 on radio station WMBG, with the help of Brian Costello, then news director of the radio station and a student at The College of William and Mary's Marshall-Wythe School of Law.

"Until then, I had just been an observer. He gave me my `break,'" she says of Costello, now a lawyer in northern Virginia.

Bradby now gives the weather regularly on WMBG. She's been with the station "on and off" for about three years, she says.

"I don't mind announcing the weather on radio but I won't do TV," she says. "I'm camera shy."

The funniest incident in her weather broadcasting career involved a caller who constantly made jokes.

"He'd ask supposedly funny questions like `weather or not we'd have weather.' After a while it got a little annoying.

"One day he called and I told him today's weather was cancelled for lack of interest.

"He never called again!"

On the job, Bradby examines a series of charts to determine air patterns for this area. She consults the National Weather Service and Patrick Henry International Airport.

"I don't do it alone," she says. "I have a lot of help. We share information."

But despite the sophisticated equipment available, one of Bradby's most prized possessions is a home weather forecasting device given to her by her daughter, Roxanne.

Last year, she and her husband, William, began a new business, Bradby Weather Forecasting, which serves businesses and public service agencies in Williamsburg, James City County and York County. She has also written a book on the history of Williamsburg weather which she says is to be published in the near future.

"I've enjoyed my career very much so far, but I do have a motto," Bradby says. "When I'm right, no one remembers. When I'm wrong, no one forgets."

Whatever has happened, Wanda the Weather Lady no longer describes herself as a bored housewife.